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EAEU countries mull over joint space project
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MOSCOW, 14 July (BelTA) - The Council of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) has approved the first cooperation project of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) countries in the provision of space and geoinformation services based on remote sensing data - an interstate program, which will be a pilot one for the EAEU member states, BelTA learned from the press service of the EEC.
The implementation of the program will begin after its approval by the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council, which meeting is scheduled for 17 July.
“After the EAEU presidents gave the relevant instructions, representatives of space agencies and leading manufacturers of space technology embarked on the joint work to develop the interstate program. A high-quality documents with great prospects has been developed,” said Artak Kamalyan, Member of the Board – Minister in charge of Industry and Agriculture of the Eurasian Economic Commission.
“Earth remote sensing technologies from space are a highly precise and operational tool for studying our planet, which helps to effectively manage its resources. Today's technologies offer unique solutions to improve the efficiency of exploration and production of mineral resources, to introduce the latest best practices in agriculture, to prevent and mitigate emergency situations, to protect the environment and control climate change. Approximately 80% of the information used to make weather forecasts comes from space. A total of about 500 remote sensing satellites are in Earth orbit. Very soon they may be joined by the Eurasian ones,” representatives of the EEC said.
The interstate program is set to be implemented in 2021-2025. For this purpose, the EAEU countries and the EEC will have to go through three stages together. The first stage is to unite the existing and prospective satellite constellations of the EAEU countries. As a result, the coverage area of the observed zone will be significantly increased, and the necessary information will be transmitted to users more quickly. Accordingly, the competitiveness of the united satellite resources in the global space market will increase.
At the second stage the EAEU countries will develop a unified information portal - a database of united space imagery data. They will also upgrade national ground-based data reception and processing complexes. This will considerably improve the quality of geo-information services provided to users in various sectors of the EAEU economy.
The final stage of the interstate program will be the development of a promising joint space system for remote sensing of the allied countries on the basis of medium- and high-resolution spacecraft, the development and production of which will be carried out in cooperation with enterprises of the member states. The characteristics of the prospective joint spacecraft will correspond to the quality of the best world models, and will exceed them in some respects.
“The interstate program will help effectively use the advantages of the common economic space, to unite industrial, scientific, technical and marketing capabilities of the EAEU countries, to involve all the EAEU states, including Armenia and Kyrgyzstan that do not possess spacecrafts, in the work on the project and as a result to get a much bigger overall result, available to all the participants of the interstate program,” the EEC said.
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